Residential loans that are considered to be seriously past due have fallen each of the past four months. A similar trend is developing for real estate loans that are written off. The outlook for the current quarter is more of the same.
The 90-day delinquency rate on mortgages was 5.78 percent in April.
A month earlier, home loans that were past due at least three months accounted for 6.03 percent of outstanding balances.
The statistics were included in CreditForecast.com’s Household Credit Report jointly produced by Moody’s Analytics and Equifax.
The default rate has declined each month since December 2011, when it stood at 6.58 percent.
In April 2011, 90-day delinquency was 6.63 percent.
Factoring in auto loans and bank cards, 5.44 percent of outstanding consumer credit was past-due last month, also improving from March when the composite rate was 5.64 percent and April 2011 when overall delinquency came in at 6.20 percent.
The report indicated “sharply improved” consumer credit conditions in April, with overall 30-day delinquency rates rolling back to pre-recession levels. The improvement occurred on both a seasonally adjusted and unadjusted basis.
“Despite some volatility and seasonal patterns, the data suggest that trends established in the first quarter continued into the second quarter despite the sluggish job market,” the report said.
Another metric in the report, the share of mortgage balances terminated through default or bankruptcy, fell to 0.19 percent from March’s 0.21 percent rate. That number was 0.26 percent in April 2011.
